Tuesday, 4 October 2011

Hitory Of Han Dynasty

Han Dynaty played an important role in history of China. It contributed to the Chinese culture and civilization. After Qin was overthrew by the peasants rebellion, Liu Bang and Xiang Yu were two leaders that struggled to seize the regime position of a new dyansty. They have gone against each other and at last Liu Bang defeated Xiang Yu to be the first emperor of Han dynasty. Chang’an became capital during the Han Dynasty after a short national war.

Building upon the base of Qin dynasty, the new empire retained much of the Qin administrative structure but retreated a little from centralized rule by establishing vassal principalities in some areas for the sake of political convenience.

Instead of using the previous harsher and crule laws and regulation against the common people. The Han rulers modified some of the harsher aspects of the previous dynasty; Confucian ideals of government, out of favor during the Qin period, were adopted as the creed of the Han Empire, and Confucian scholars gained prominent status as the core of the civil service.

A civil service examination system also was initiated. Intellectual, literary, and artistic endeavors revived and flourished.

The Han period produced China's most famous historian, Sima Qian ( 145-87 B.C.?), whose Shiji ( Historical Records) provides a detailed chronicle from the time of a legendary Xia emperor to that of the Han emperor Wu Di 141-87 B.C.).

Technological advances also marked this period. Two of the great Chinese inventions, paper and porcelain, date from Han times.

The Han dynasty, after which the members of the ethnic majority in China, the "people of Han," are named, was notable also for its military prowess. The empire expanded westward as far as the rim of the Tarim Basin (in modern Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region), making possible relatively secure caravan traffic across Central Asia to Antioch, Baghdad, and Alexandria.

The paths of caravan traffic are often called the "silk route" because the route was used to export Chinese silk to the Roman Empire. Chinese armies also invaded and annexed parts of northern Vietnam and northern Korea toward the end of the second century B.C.

Han control of peripheral regions was generally insecure, however. To ensure peace with non-Chinese local powers, the Han court developed a mutually beneficial "tributary system"

Non-Chinese states were allowed to remain autonomous in exchange for symbolic acceptance of Han overlordship.

Tributary ties were confirmed and strengthened through intermarriages at the ruling level and periodic exchanges of gifts and goods.
After 200 years, Han rule was interrupted briefly (in A.D. 9-24 by Wang Mang or a reformer), and then restored for another 200 years.

The Han rulers, however, were unable to adjust to what centralization had wrought: a growing population, increasing wealth and resultant financial difficulties and rivalries, and ever-more complex political institutions. Riddled with the corruption characteristic of the dynastic cycle, by A.D. 220 the Han empire collapsed.

After centuries of political division, the adventurer Liu Bang ?? (Han Gaozu ???) succeeded in founding a new empire, following the tradition of the former kings of Zhou ? (11th cent. BC-221 BC ) and the Warring States ?? and walking in the footsteps of the First Emperor of Qin ??? (221-206 BC). But unlike the short-lived Qin empire, the Han Dynasty should last for four centuries.
Fundamental changes took place during this time and helped to build up what we now call the Chinese culture. It was not only the governmental system with its huge state bureaucracy, modeled on legist models, that took more concrete shape; the second important event was the rise of Confucianism as the main state doctrine, while popular belief in Daoist deities and practices by both aristocracy and the peasants were very widespread. And for the first time in history, China had contact with the West through the Silk Road.
The Western Han period can be divided into the time of consolidation (Emperors Han Gaozu, Wendi ???, Zhaodi ???, Jingdi ???), the zenith with the expansion into Inner Asia (Emperor Han Wudi ???) and the centralization of power, and the time of replacement of the imperial power by the mighty consort clan of the Wang ? (emperors Yuandi ???, Chengdi ???).
Wang Mang ?? tried to replace the Han Dynasty but his reforms to shape an ideal Confucian government failed, and the Han Dynasty was restored as Eastern Han.
The Eastern Han, much more than Western Han, suffered under the intervention of consort clans (waiqi ??) and eunuch (huanguan ??) factions into the inner power circle of the empire. The fundaments of both of the Wang Mang and Eastern Han administration were shaken by large peasant uprisings with religious backgrounds (Red Eyebrows ??, Yellow Turbans ??, Five-Pecks-of-Grain Sect ????), the helm of government of Eastern Han was taken over my mighty warlords that should divide the Han empire into three "kingdoms" (Sanguo ??).